Mortality, Family and Lifestyles - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Économiques Access content directly
Journal Articles Journal of Family and Economic Issues Year : 2011

Mortality, Family and Lifestyles

Abstract

While there is a large empirical literature on the intergenerational transmission of health and survival outcomes in relation to lifestyles, little theoretical work exists on the long-run prevalence of (un)healthy lifestyles induced by mortality patterns. To examine that issue, this paper develops an overlapping generations model where a healthy lifestyle and an unhealthy lifestyle are transmitted vertically or obliquely across generations. It is shown that there must exist a locally stable heterogeneous equilibrium involving a majority of healthy agents, as a result of the larger parental gains from socialization efforts under a higher life expectancy. We also examine the robustness of our results to the introduction of parental altruistic concerns for children's health and of asymmetric socialization costs.

Dates and versions

halshs-00754537 , version 1 (20-11-2012)

Identifiers

Cite

Grégory Ponthière. Mortality, Family and Lifestyles. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2011, 32 (2), pp.175-190. ⟨10.1007/s10834-010-9229-9⟩. ⟨halshs-00754537⟩
104 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More